The following are the best parts of my conversation with Michelle Cimaroli, Shoreline Community College Foundation Manager.

Cimaroli provides insight on how much money each year is allocated for awarding scholarships, what different types of scholarships are out there, as well as the process that is used when deciding who gets chosen to receive the awards. We also cover common pitfalls and best practices that could be used when applying. Foundation scholarships are an underutilized resource that could prove fruitful for any student willing to put in a small chunk of time following the tips outlined here.

Happy scholarship hunting!

Transcript:

Chris Van Hoosier
Do you want to just state your name and your title for—

Michelle Cimaroli
Michelle Cimaroli, and I’m the Foundation Manager at Shoreline Community College Foundation.

Chris Van Hoosier
What percentage of students on campus get scholarships through foundations?

Michelle Cimaroli
That one’s a tough question, because it depends on the cycles. So we do the annual cycle, which is the majority of our scholarships. So that one, we typically award about 100 scholarships during that cycle. And then we have our quarterly scholarships that we do, which that one’s a lot smaller of a bucket. So we usually reward right between 10 and 15 is what we have per quarter to award. So it just kind of depends.

Chris Van Hoosier
Is there any overlap with financial aid or work study and the eligibility for the scholarships? So if you get a certain financial aid package, are you less eligible for one of the foundation scholarships?

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah. It depends on how much room is in your financial aid budget. So we award. And then when they’re awarded, the information is shared with the cashier’s office plus the financial aid office. So then at that point is when they’ll look and make sure that there’s enough room in the student’s budget in order to award it. Generally, it’s not an issue. There’s every once in a while, but it will become an issue where I’ll be told that they don’t have room, they can’t be awarded.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK, and when you’re saying room in the student’s budget, do you mean like—

Michelle Cimaroli
The financial aid.

Chris Van Hoosier
Do you mean that they’ve gotten so much financial aid that with an additional scholarship, you’d be giving them money outside of their regular school expenses? Or how does that play out?

Michelle Cimaroli
So it’s a federal rule. And so the federal government comes up with—when you fill out a FAFSA application, then how it’s determined how they’re going to award you any grant funding or loans or any of that. They look at the cost of attendance, and then they look at what your estimated family contribution is. And they put all that together to come up with a budget, what your budget should be for that year.

So if you are awarded a lot in financial aid, and then say you have work study, and now you also have loans, that all gets packaged together. So if you are at the max, like we just recently had a student that couldn’t receive any funding because financial aid said she literally had $0.53 in her available to her. That was it. So it can’t go over. So a lot of times what they’ll do is if it gets that close, and if there is loans, the student has loans available to them that they haven’t utilized, then a possibility is to cut down the loan so that they can open up the space to be able to award the scholarship.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK, yeah, that makes sense.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah. But if you don’t have financial aid, if you didn’t apply for financial aid, then the scholarship doesn’t affect anything.

Chris Van Hoosier
How much money per year is allocated to providing scholarships through foundations? And how much money was awarded last year?

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, so we awarded $266,000 this year.

Chris Van Hoosier
Kind of talked a little bit about the funding buckets. So would you mind giving a more detailed breakdown of what those buckets are and how that is determined by the administration, possibly, in collaboration with the foundation’s office?

Michelle Cimaroli
So the requirements are determined by the donor. So when the donor sets up a fund and say they want to offer nursing scholarships, then they have to—we have some endowments which require a minimum of $25,000 to set it up. So they have that, and then they set up what the criteria is, and they will have—we have ones, for instance, for nursing students where they have to have a 3.0, be a single parent with children, young children at home. We have one that’s for students going into nursing that are Filipino descent.

So there’s all different kinds, and that’s what the donor puts in. A lot of donors, they don’t care. They just want to help the students. So then the process is when students apply for scholarships, they’re going on to—we use—it’s called AwardSpring is the portal. It’s a third party that we use. And they go in, apply on the application. It’s one application. And then once they submit it, the software system then matches them to whichever scholarships they meet that criteria for.

Chris Van Hoosier
So it seems like there’s a pretty general system for how students apply for scholarships. So how do you differentiate a weak candidate from a strong candidate in terms of awarding the scholarships?

Michelle Cimaroli
So there is a scoring rubric. So we have two to three volunteers per application. Typically, it would be grouped up three people reviewing each application. But that means a lot of volunteers. A lot of volunteers. A lot of volunteers. So a lot of times, it ends up being two. And most of the scholarships are need-based. So some of them are the merit. The merit-based, we do take in the merit.

But to make it more equitable, what I did a couple—well, I think it was a couple of years ago—that removed from the scoring rubric the academic, the GPA piece. Because as long as they hit that minimum GPA, if it’s a 2.0 and they have 2.0, and it’s a need-based, then we shouldn’t be scoring based off of their academics.

And so then it has a financial need piece, where it asks the applicant what their annual personal income is, what their annual household income is, what’s the percentage that the contribution from the family—and it’s broken out like 0, 25, 50, 75, 100%. And then what does the committee need to know about your financial circumstances?

So then the reviewer has to take in all that information. And this is probably the most complicated part about reviewing scholarship applications. Because people don’t always understand the questions and how to answer them, especially when you’re talking about income, especially for students that are not from here. And we have a description of how they need to answer it. Whose information they include, if it’s for household income, and what to include for personal income.

And then we have a chart that is the state median income, family income. And that breaks it down to how—it’s a score of 1 to 10. And that will break it down by—it also asks how many are in the household, and if there’s any children that they support, or family members that they support. And so then they look at how many are in, and then what the salary level is. It will determine what that score is going to be.

And then there’s essay questions on there. There’s four essay questions.

The first one is about accomplishments and obstacles. The second one’s goals, academic, career, and personal. The third one is pretty much volunteer activity, community involvement. What have you done in the community? And then the last one is, how do you plan on giving back to your community in the future? So part of the scoring rubric that is given to the reviewers is it has—those are done on a 1 to 5.

And they’re not supposed to look at spelling, grammar, any of that. Remove that, because we have a lot of international students that don’t—spelling is not their thing.

So it’s about what they’re—how they’re answering the question. As long as they go in and they—the scoring rubric has an example of what a number 1 would be, and what a number 5 would be. And so then that’s how they determine how to score them. So if they don’t—we have some that will be great answers, but it doesn’t address the question. If it doesn’t address the question at all, then it’s a 1.

Chris Van Hoosier
Yeah. Yeah, I remember my high school AP history teacher—it was like AP US history. He was like, AP, it means answer the prompts, period. If you’re going to do one thing, you just really need to be on base with what they’re asking.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Van Hoosier
So I think that’s a similar—

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, oh, yeah. Well—

Chris Van Hoosier
—same criteria.

Michelle Cimaroli
And I now have a link to the scoring rubric on the application, so that folks, as they’re—for the essays, once they get there, it’s like right above the essay questions. So that they can pull it up and look at it and see what people—what we’re looking for. But a lot of them don’t, and so you still get one-sentence answers. It’s like, well, that doesn’t tell you a whole lot.

Chris Van Hoosier
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then, yeah, you’re saying that basically, there might be some—I think I’m kind of going back to the bucketing question, because basically, right, some of the people who donate will want it to go to a specific population. I guess there are others that want it to go to a more general population. And that’s maybe where your department has a little bit of leeway to say, OK, well, now they’re giving us the responsibility of billing this out. You’re saying there’s an academic scholarship side, and then there’s a need-based scholarship side. Maybe there—is there a diversity piece as well? And what are those—

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah.

Chris Van Hoosier
What are those buckets relative to each other, would you say, if you had to give an approximate divvying?

Michelle Cimaroli
I would say 50% of the scholarships are general scholarship. And then the rest of them are more for a certain program. We do have some where the departments, like the nursing ones, for instance, the nursing scholarships for the annual cycle, the nursing department, they’re the ones that review. They’re the reviewers for those. So it’s still in the same system, but they use a different rubric. And they’re very aware as to the criteria of each one of those scholarships. And then they’re going through and choosing the students. We, the applicant—and then we have some that are—the donors want to review, like, see the top. They let us go and score. And then they’ll want, like, the top five to top 10. And then they’ll pick from there.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK, I see. And then, so you’re saying for the general scholarships, those don’t consider GPA above 2.0 at all?

Michelle Cimaroli
I mean, there are a couple of them that are higher GPA. But it’s just the general ones just as a GPA—

Chris Van Hoosier
Like above, like, a certain—yeah, just above a certain number.

Michelle Cimaroli
2.0 is the lowest.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah.

Chris Van Hoosier
Let’s say if somebody had, like, a 3.0 or something, is that giving them points on that rubric? Or is that kind of like, OK.

Michelle Cimaroli
No, not unless it’s merit.

Chris Van Hoosier
Because, yeah, I think, at least from my personal experience, I think I probably had the wrong idea about the scholarships. Because I thought, like, you know, well, first of all, like, you know, my English teacher is, whatever, sending us a Canvas message saying, like, oh, hey, like, you’ll apply for the scholarships, et cetera, et cetera.

And then, you know, me being a procrastinator, right, I’m waiting for the last day. And then I’m like, OK, well, like, you know, this could be important. Like, I probably should be doing this. And then, you know, just quickly, really quickly going through the application, right, which is probably what you don’t want. Like, I’m like, OK, well, like, you know, I’ll fill this out. And then kind of, like, whatever, let my GPA speak for itself or something.

Michelle Cimaroli
Right.

Chris Van Hoosier
And then it’s like, you know, on the other end, I’m kind of like, oh, like, I didn’t get any scholarships. That’s pretty interesting. But now that you’re kind of telling me, like, this is the way that it’s working, hopefully I can pass that along to other students who, like, you know, might be in my similar situation. Who knows how often that happens?

Michelle Cimaroli
Right. I know I’m horrible about writing about stuff about myself. But if I’m talking to somebody and they ask certain questions, the more things come out. And like, I just recently had a young man that came in. And I helped him. And I just asked him questions. And he went through. And he did an amazing job on his application. And, you know, before he came in here, I looked at it. And he had, you know, pretty good answers.

But then afterwards, it was like he did a spectacular job. But it was all things that he didn’t think of. And then after he got it all typed out, he’s like, wow. I didn’t realize how great of a plan I have. And so he had me send him, copy and paste and email, all his answers. Because it totally listed out a life plan for him. And it was very detailed, from now to years down the road, where he wanted to be. And so it’s like, yeah, you know, it comes in—it’s good to be able to do that, especially when you’re young and you’re trying to figure out your future, right?

Chris Van Hoosier
Because, yeah, I was actually helping one of my friends with their personal statement stuff for school, too. And it seemed like, you know, what they had on the paper and then whatever they had after we had a conversation was so drastically different.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah.

Chris Van Hoosier
And it’s like, you know, I think you kind of go into it thinking, oh, I should answer a certain way.

Michelle Cimaroli
Right.

Chris Van Hoosier
They don’t want that much of my own personal history or my personal story. And then it’s kind of like, when you start kind of like, prodding a little bit deeper with those questions, like some really great stuff comes out, which, yeah, should have been there in the first place.

Michelle Cimaroli
And you don’t even think about it.

Chris Van Hoosier
Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, for whatever reason, getting that other person involved helps a lot.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that’s really—that’s good. But the big issue now, though, is ChatGPT.

Chris Van Hoosier
Oh, yeah, of course.

Michelle Cimaroli
And this last time, right now, we’re in the midst of reviewing the annual scholarships. And it’s a problem.

Chris Van Hoosier
Yeah, because you can kind of tell—

Michelle Cimaroli
Yes, you can.

Chris Van Hoosier
The writing style is very formal, right? So it’s like, you can kind of get a decent sense. I mean, I think some people are better about kind of doing it half and half, and then interleaving.

Michelle Cimaroli
Right, there are a lot that don’t.

Chris Van Hoosier
Yeah, there are a good amount that just copy, paste. That’s the end of it, right? Which, I don’t know, shows a complete—I don’t know, like a really lack of effort, I would say.

Michelle Cimaroli
It does, because it’s not teaching you.

Chris Van Hoosier
And it’s also not personal, right?

Michelle Cimaroli
Not at all. Not at all.

Chris Van Hoosier
That’s unfortunate.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, because you actually will go through, and then you’re spending—it’s now like each answer is a novel. And then reading through the novel and going, it doesn’t even answer the question.

Chris Van Hoosier
They had to write a better prompt to write it to the machine. How many scholarships would you say go unutilized, or have the same situation your students apply?

Michelle Cimaroli
I would say that we probably have—I’d say probably about 5% of them. If they click the program that they’re in when they’re applying, it should put them in there. But there are some of them that have those additional qualifying questions that show up on the dashboard after that they have to—

Chris Van Hoosier
Oh, OK.

Michelle Cimaroli
So there’s one that’s like that that is for STEM majors that want to go to work in a data center. So very specific data center. So I will see—I’ve seen a couple of applications where I’ll be scoring them. And now when we score them, I don’t have it so that people can see who the students are. So to keep that going on, it’s like a number.

So I’ll be reviewing as a reviewer. And I’m like, oh, here’s a student. This is what they want to do for a living. They want to work in a data center. But now there’s no applications under the data center scholarship because it has additional requirements. They have to actually go to the dashboard and click that scholarship. And then it will ask them questions about the importance of a data center in today’s world kind of thing. And why are they interested in that career path. But either they don’t want to answer all the additional questions, or they don’t pay attention to what’s on the dashboard.

Chris Van Hoosier
What advice would you give to students who are considering applying for scholarships? And are there any strategies or tips that could increase their chances of receiving an award? I guess you kind of touched on that, but just maybe one or two more ideas if you have them. I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about this kind of thing.

Michelle Cimaroli
Spend time on those essay questions. You don’t want one sentence, two sentence answers. So you figure you want to spend a couple hours total. And the best advice I think of doing it is you fill it out, fill out those questions, come back to it another day and reread them. Because you’re always going to find things at another time that you missed putting in there and making sure to elaborate. And look at the scoring rubric that’s on that application right before the essay questions to help while you’re filling those in.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK. Both sounds really useful and applicable. So I’m sure students would love to hear that.

Michelle Cimaroli
And then the financial needs section. That’s a huge—people don’t understand even when putting the description as to what to include. You’ll see folks that will say—when I ask them what they’re—they’ll say they’re employed, but they’ll put zero for income, for household and for personal income. And then you’re like, OK, wait. But—

Chris Van Hoosier
There’s a big mismatch there.

Michelle Cimaroli
Big mismatch. And then the other thing that happens too, international students will put—instead of US, they’ll put their currency, but they don’t put the currency symbol in front. So they might put like $800,000. So they get a big fat zero. So they don’t—because there’s no financial need. Yet it might be that in US, it’s $10,000. We don’t know that, right? Because they’re putting in a high number and not letting you know that it’s not in US currency.

Chris Van Hoosier
That makes sense. That’s interesting.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yes, that happens quite often.

Chris Van Hoosier
I’m sure you’ve seen it all.

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, and don’t rely on ChatGPT.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK, so you’re saying like for the yearly scholarship, there’s a really limited number of students that receive that?

Michelle Cimaroli
No, for the quarterly ones.

Chris Van Hoosier
For the quarterly ones. Oh, OK, it’s 13. OK, versus for like the yearly ones.

Michelle Cimaroli
That’s like—yeah, there’s like 100 that we award.

Chris Van Hoosier
OK, and how many people typically apply for that one?

Michelle Cimaroli
This time, actually, it wasn’t very many, because I want to say it was about 300 this time. But even then, I mean, I’ve had it up to about 400, but that’s still—you think of the amount of students—

Michelle Cimaroli
Right, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think it was just under 300 this time for this year’s that applied. But yeah, but we have—like there’s a whole lot, too, that require—some of these old ones that require letters of reference, for instance. That’s a pain, because students could go to the instructors. Because actually, in AwardSpring, it has a spot that you put in the instructor’s name, and it will email the instructor with a message from the student that says what they’re asking for, and they can upload it. Most of the time, they don’t do it. It’s not done. And then the student doesn’t realize it hasn’t been done.

Chris Van Hoosier
All right, I think that’s all the questions that I had. So I think you gave me a lot of really great information. Yeah, thanks again for making—

Michelle Cimaroli
Yeah, you’re welcome. Bye!